This article will tell you about a guy named Raag Vamdatt who left his job to become the full time Indian blogger.
Raag Vamdatt, a Personal finance advisor, who recently leave his lavish job, only to pursue his passion. Raam Vamdatt is now one of those handful of Full-time bloggers that belong to India
Ever since i jumped into blogging bandwagon, one thing that kept me fascinated and enthusiastic about blogging was the endless possibilities it had.
If you’re a working professional and have taken up blogging as your hobby or part-time activity, you always carry a desire at the back of your mind and that is, to become a Full-time blogger, someday.
In other words, you aspire to make enough money from your creative writing skills, good enough that it would allow you to kick off your job and let you live your life the way you could only dream while working 9-to-6 day job.
More time, more money and most importantly, lots of Work satisfaction !
As blogging doesn’t offer too many promises and only handful of passionate folks actually turn it into their full-time profession, it’s certainly an achievement for anyone who decides to ditch his job for a full-time blogging career, that too when that ‘safe’ job is paying him off well over Rs.1 lakh($2200+) a month. It takes a lot of guts to do that !
I am talking about Raag Vamdatt, a Personal finance and Investment advisor, who recently kissed goodbye to his lavish job, only to pursue his passion. Raam Vamdatt is now one of those handful of Full-time bloggers that belong to India.
Raag blogs about personal finance, investments, tax queries, financial planning and whole bunch of financial topics you could possibly think of. And after going through couple of his articles, i find no surprises to hear that he has now turned his ‘hobby’ into a full-time career.
To know more about his journey to becoming a Full-time blogger and how a Job guy transformed into a Solopreneur, i threw at him a volley of questions to answer.
Take a look at his responses…especially if you ever wish to become a Full-time blogger anytime soon.
Q. When exactly did you start blogging. And what really inspired you to start blogging for the first time ?
When I was working as a business analyst with an information technology company, I had lots of friends from the technology side – I observed that they earned well, and being typical Indians, saved well too. However, they didn’t know how to invest well. They just bought some arbitrary insurance policies in February / March in order to save some income tax – at the advise of some insurance “advisors”.
I had good knowledge about the India markets, and I knew I had a firm grip on investment fundamentals. So I thought – why not use that to educate others about better ways of investing and planning their finances?
That is how I started RaagVamdatt.com in end-2007, and started a Hindi personal finance website PaisaPlanner in end-2009.
Q. Did you start blogging as a ‘hobby’ or you had strong conviction about turning ‘Blogging’ as a ‘Full time profession’ from day one ?
It started purely as a hobby – not even in my dreams did I imagine leaving my job for it someday! Yes, I had some advertising on the blog from the very beginning, but it was just to earn some money on the side so that I could pay for the domain name, hosting, etc.
Q. Tell us about the roadblocks/hiccups/compromises you had to deal with, while managing your day job with blogging.
I started the blog when I was in the USA. There, my employers offered very good work-life balance, which means that I could leave office at 5.00 – 5.30pm. That gave me good 4 – 5 hours at home to work on the blog. Of course, my wife had to compromise as she had to give up her time with me, but she was always very encouraging and supportive.
The situation changed when I had a son – of course, the time I had to give at home increased many-fold. So, the frequency of posting went down.
And then, I moved to India. As you would be aware, we are not big on work-life balance here in India. I was spending late hours at work, and that has a direct impact on the blog – I didn’t post anything meaningful for 3 straight months!
The blog is very dear to my heart, and I have a firm belief that I can make a difference through it by offering quality advice to people like you and me. Therefore, this situation was very painful for me.
I had to sacrifice one – either my blogs, or my job. And thats when I decided to sacrifice the latter.
Q. It must be a really tough decision to quit a lavish job (Salary of over 1 lakh/$2200 per month), relying solely on your blogging revenues, especially when you’ve several responsibilities to care about. Tell us more about that.
You can bet it was tough!
I knew I loved the blogs, and I loved what I was doing there. Still, leaving the job was a tough call, especially with the responsibility of a child. However, I knew I wanted to keep the blogs growing, and couldn’t do that along with the job. I did some calculations, and figured that I could take 2 years off to dedicate to my blogs and see if I can convert then into a profession.
When I realized that I would work full time on my blogs, I didn’t really have to convince my wife as she had seen me work hard for the last 2.5 years on the blogs and had seen the progress very closely. She knew my passion, and therefore I had her complete buy-in.
The tough part was to convince my parents and parents-in-law – parents on both sides have been insecure, government jobs all their lives, and it was difficult for them to digest that I was leaving a steady paycheck for the unknown. They never doubted my capability or the potential of the blogs, but still, the very idea of leaving a job was alien to them. But fortunately, I was able to convince them!
Q. On an average, how much revenue do you generate from blogging ?
Well, the income right now is peanuts – its more like 75K per year! But lets remember that this is what I was getting with part time effort, and without any advertising of my financial planning service.
Now, I would be reaching out to many more people in order to promote my services. Plus, I am introducing many more services, like training services in personal finance. I am also in the process of creating many info-products in the personal finance space.
Q. Tell us about anything you achieved with blogging that’s worth mentioning ?
The best thing that has happened to me is the response I have received from people – I have got tremendous satisfaction from guiding people and pointing them in the right direction. The numerous emails and comments praising my work is my biggest achievement!
Q. Now that you’ve become a full-time blogger, how do you foresee your future from here.
Well, I talked about some of it earlier – I have launched or am in the process of launching many new products and services.
Apart from that, I would also be more aggressive on my Hindi personal finance website www.PaisaPlanner.com, which is India’s first Hindi website on personal finance. I figure that through the Hindi website, I can spread the message of financial literacy to a very wide audience.
Q. How do you rate Indians among the whole blogosphere ?
To be frank, so far I haven’t got the time to network much with bloggers – Indian or otherwise. So, I don’t know too many of them.
But from what I see, we are a little behind. I mean, we don’t see an Indian in the top, A-list bloggers. I can think of Ramit Sethi, but he isn’t an “Indian” blogger – he’s an American blogger of Indian origin!
Q. Are you confident that you will never go back to ‘Job’ anytime soon ? If yes, what brings this confidence in you ?
I am quite certain about this. I have a passion for personal finance, and a passion for spreading good financial practices among common people. And I know I would be doing my best. Wherever there is passion, money follows. Which means no going back to a day job!
Q. Any advice/tips for all the aspiring bloggers out there ?
Never give up! I strongly believe that if you really like what you are writing about, it would take you places some day… So, hang in there, come what may!